From the first day of school until the last, Sharon walked at least a mile to catch a ride, but as she nonchalantly says “it was a mile to our mailbox.” Later, she and her younger brother, Leighton Conrad “Connie” Soule walked to a neighbor’s house where they were driven to school in a horse-drawn carriage. The school system started sending a bus to within a mile of her home when she was in 5th or 6th grade. She remembers the bus being driven by the late Bill Honey and by the late Ted Brown. She attended school in the same building until he graduated in 1956, the school which became the high school for Randolph Central School District.

“I probably wasn’t as good of a student as I should have been,” says the 85-year old. “I didn’t apply.”

Like all children, she anxiously awaited every Christmas morning. Few families had the money or desire to own an artificial Christmas tree and hers was no different. They decorated Hemlock trees cut from their property, with homemade paper ornaments. When the children were older, they learned to make Japanese lanterns for their tree.

“We used newspaper and made our own flour and water paste and it didn’t taste nearly as good as the paste we had in school,” the 85-year old says without cracking a smile. “We never put popcorn on the tree. Popcorn was for eating.”

Sharon and her brother, Connie, enjoy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the side yard of her family home in Randolph. Submitted photo

The few gifts she received during her early years were lovingly made by a parent or grandparent “if we got much of anything.” Later the family started a tradition where in the month of October they gathered together at the dining room table to pick out gifts they would like to have from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The mother filled out the order form found in the back of the book with the numbers that corresponded to a needed, but practical item for each family member. She then put it into an envelope and mailed it to the Chicago-based company knowing with an early start, they had a good chance of receiving the gifts in time for Christmas.

“My grandfather always got a union suit with a trap door in the seat. My grandmother got snuggies (insulated underpants with mid-thigh length legs). I got cotton stockings with harness straps that went over the shoulders. I was told I would get rheumatic fever if my knees got cold,” states the octogenarian.

She goes on to say her brother Connie was gifted socks and her father got dungarees (jeans).

“My mother made most of my father’s shirts and she taught me to sew,” she says. “Once in a while they would get something for the house. One time they ordered a meat grinder and received a pressure cooker instead. We never got shoes until it was time to go to school.”

The Christmas that stood out the most was the one that came when she was nine or ten years old. Both she and Connie overheard a discussion her parents were having about not having money to buy presents. The two youngsters remained silent and didn’t discuss what they had heard until they were far away from the house.

Sharon McIntosh reminisces about Christmases past from her new home, Tanglewood Manor. She has written about Christmas as a child and life growing up on the property that is now Camp Timbercrest in her book Just Connie ‘n Me: A Recollection. Photo by Beverly Kehe-Rowland

“Connie and I decided we would cut out pictures of things we wanted to give to everyone. We pasted the pictures in cards we had made,” she says. “We didn’t know our parents and grandparents were doing the same thing, so there were many homemade gifts under the tree and we thought that was so neat.”

Another memorable Christmas came a few years later. Christmas gifts were never opened until the barn chores were completed, but on this particular day, their father sent them back to the barn after they thought their jobs were done. He instructed them to drop hay from the upper floor to the lower level. After the chore was completed, they returned to a dark living room. Suddenly the tree lit up like it never had before. Their father had positioned himself behind it in order to be able to plug in the string of lights that now held a style of bulbs they had never seen before. But the real surprise came a few minutes later when bubbles started rising in the glass cylinders. The children had just witnessed bubble lights for the first time.

She liked being a country kid.

“I enjoyed having free run of every acre of the land. Connie and I would be gone for hours and hours and we learned things.”

She did a 4H project on forestry where she collected buds or blossoms and their seeds and leaves from all four seasons. Few of the other members did a complete project. The reward for her work was a trip to the Adirondacks where she stayed in a lumbering camp.

Her parents sold the farm in the early 1960s. The property was acquired by the Girl Scout Council to be used for Camp Timbercrest, which opened in 1966. The camp’s administration building was built very near where the old farmhouse used to be.

After her marriage to Robert Hammond, the couple resided in a small mobile home across the road from where his parents resided in Dewittville. Eventually, they were deeded land by the in-laws on which they built a home.

For many years, she worked at Kling Furniture, which eventually became Ethan Allen Furniture, first in the finishing department and later in purchasing. She took the money from her retirement account to attend BOCES. She graduated an LPN a few days before her 50th birthday and spent more than 20 years working at a local hospital.

Robert Hammond passed away in 2001. Later the widow married James McIntosh and moved to Ripley, NY. She gained two sons, Bob and Harry, several grandchildren and nieces and nephews from the marriage. She still is visited by these nieces and nephews.

She attended Lake Erie Baptist Church in Brocton until recently. She had been very active in a quilting and reading group while living in Ripley and still enjoys both hobbies. For ten years, she and her first husband hosted the Hammond Family picnic, which was attended by 75-100 family members.

Mrs. McIntosh has one son, Kelly Hammond. He and his wife Doreen, have three children and seven grandchildren which have all been or are currently being homeschooled. The active senior citizen is a new resident at Tanglewood Manor, which she is enjoying very much. If you would like to read more about her early life you may find her book, Just Connie and Me: A Recollection at amazon.com. It is also available at the Randolph Free Library. She is in the process of writing a second book.